Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian, also known as Anna Maria Sibylla, (born April 2, 1647, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died January 13, 1717, Amsterdam, Netherlands), German-born naturalist and nature artist known for her illustrations of insects and plants. Her works on insect development and the transformation of insects through the process of metamorphosis contributed to the advance of entomology in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Merian, Maria SibyllaNaturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian, print by Jacob Houbraken after a portrait by Georg Gsell, 18th century.Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds, object no. RP-P-2004-73-119

When Merian was three, her father, renowned illustrator Matthäus Merian, died, and she subsequently was raised by her mother and stepfather, still-life painter Jacob Marrel. Merian studied painting under the tutelage of Marrel at the family’s Frankfurt home. She collected insects and other specimens for Marrel’s compositions, and in these formative years, nature—plants and caterpillars in particular—became Merian’s primary subjects of artistic interest. She eventually started her own caterpillar collection in order to study the insects’ maturation into butterflies. Even in these early years of her career, Merian’s observations and illustrations of insects and plants in various life stages were remarkable for their scientific quality.

In 1665 Merian married Johann Andreas Graff, an apprentice of Marrel’s. Three years later, the couple’s first daughter, Johanna Helena, was born, and soon after the family moved to Nürnberg, Graff’s hometown. They remained there for the next 14 years, during which time Merian created a series of watercolour engravings of popular flowers. These illustrations were published between 1675 and 1680 in the three-volume Blumenbuch (“Book of Flowers”), which was later reprinted, with 36 plates and a preface, as Neues Blumenbuch (“New Book of Flowers”). In 1678 the couple’s second daughter, Dorothea Maria, was born. The following year, Merian published the first volume of Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung, und sonderbare Blumen-nahrung (“Caterpillars, Their Wondrous Transformation and Peculiar Nourishment from Flowers”; the second volume appeared in 1683), in which she depicted in detail the metamorphosis of moths and butterflies. Each insect was shown on or beside its plant food source and was accompanied by text describing the stage of metamorphosis illustrated. The work was celebrated for its scientific accuracy and for bringing a new standard of precision to scientific illustration.

caterpillar and butterfly; Merian, Maria SibyllaA branch of sweet cherry and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, drawing on parchment with watercolour and gouache by Maria Sibylla Merian, 1679.Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object no. RP-T-1946-73

Merian, Graff, and their children eventually returned to Frankfurt, apparently to care for Merian’s mother following her stepfather’s death in 1681. In 1685, however, Graff returned, alone, to Nürnberg, and the next year Merian, her mother, and her daughters set out for the village of Wiewert (Wieuwerd) in West Friesland (now in the Netherlands), where her half-brother Caspar had joined a Labadist colony (Labadists were a separatist group of Pietists founded by theologian Jean de Labadie). During her time with the colony, Merian appears to have produced few paintings. In 1691, a year after her mother’s death, Merian and her daughters went to Amsterdam. She soon after was legally divorced from Graff.

In 1699 Merian and Dorothea Maria set sail for a projected five-year-long expedition to Suriname, located on the northern coast of South America. The voyage afforded Merian a unique opportunity to explore new species of insects and plants. The two women settled in at Paramaribo and together collected, studied, and composed illustrations of the jungle’s plants, insects, and other animals. After less than two years, however, illness forced Merian to return to Amsterdam. In 1705 she published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (“The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname”). Arguably the most important work of her career, it included some 60 engravings illustrating the different stages of development that she had observed in Suriname’s insects. Similar to her caterpillar book, Metamorphosis depicted the insects on and around their host plants and included text describing each stage of development. The book was one of the first illustrated accounts of the natural history of Suriname.

The year of Merian’s death, her paintings were purchased for Peter I, tsar of Russia. Dorothea Maria subsequently was summoned to St. Petersburg, where she worked as a scientific illustrator for the tsar and became the first woman to be employed by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Johanna Helena, who moved with her husband to Suriname in 1711, likewise became a noted artist in her own right.